Posted 11 July 2012

The Pinball Arcade Launching Today On PS3 And PS Vita In Europe

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With both PS3 and PS Vita launches of the Pinball Arcade releasing today, I thought that I’d share some details about our game and offer some general gameplay tips.

The launch tables include one from each of the four major manufactures that we’ve licensed. Tales of the Arabian Nights (Williams), Ripley’s Believe It or Not (Stern), Theatre of Magic (Bally), and Black Hole (Gottlieb). Tales and Black Hole were part of the Pinball Hall of Fame games. We’ve spent a lot of time improving the physics and the graphics of our pinball engine over the past few years, so we feel that they’re definitely worthy of updating.

When we first made the Gottlieb collection we gathered reference from the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas. We took a lot of pictures, recorded the audio with microphones, and took notes on the rules along with gameplay video reference. We actually re-programmed all of the rules from scratch.

That was a huge challenge! Now, we buy all of the tables and take them apart. Plus, we now have a bunch of physics experience and improved technology to make tables look and play almost exactly like the real thing. ROM emulation is a huge part of the improved technology. Our simulations now run the same exact code as the original tables with authentic music, sound effects, and voice over. It’s been a learning experience, and it’s our goal to continue to improve.

When choosing tables, we look for tables that are universally recognized as being great (ipdb.org and pinside.com are two sources that we highly respect); we throw in a large helping of what our fans want, what our pinball expert friends think would be good picks, and what tables we at FarSight love and think will make for great videogame simulations. Of course, the final decision is also impacted by what’s feasible to license.

To score well at our game, I strongly recommend that you master the art of nudging the table without tilting. In general (video and real pinball), the key is ball control and knowing what to expect as much as possible. It is usually much easier to be consistent with a shot fired from a cradled position than when you hit the ball with a live deflection. But equally important, you should try to learn where and how the ball feeds towards the flippers as best you can and how to keep the pinball or pinballs (in multi-ball) under control as much as possible by mastering different passing and catching techniques.

A lot of people are calling our game the greatest pinball simulation ever created. At FarSight, we take great pride in our work and we take this distinction very seriously. We are focused on adding a steady stream of great pinball tables into the Pinball Arcade for both PS3 and PS Vita.

Add-On Packs 1 and 2 Coming Soon!

We plan to release two great Add-on packs within the next four to six weeks: Add-On Pack 1 (Medieval Madness, The Machine: Bride of Pin*Bot™) and Add-On Pack 2 (Cirqus Voltaire, Funhouse).

Just recently announced, we also have two more Add-on packs on their way. Both Add-On Pack 3 and Add-On Pack 4 are scheduled for a late summer release for PS3 and PS Vita, with each expansion adding two new tables. All four tables are historically significant and are treasured by pinball enthusiasts for their exquisite craftsmanship and innovative mechanical design. Read on for more details!

Add-On Pack 3

Monster Bash was originally released in 1998 and was designed by George Gomez. The goal of the table is to get six of the most iconic Universal Studios Monsters to form a band the likes of which has never been seen! If you can dig out the Mummy, he’ll dust himself off and plug in his bass. Dracula will fly out of his coffin, dying to sink his teeth into a mean guitar riff. The Creature from the Black Lagoon will crank on his sax! Frankenstein will jump off his slab and jam on his keyboard. The Bride of Frankenstein will start to sing about her Ball and Chain and the Wolfman will give you a howling drumbeat. With the help of the PHANTOM FLIP auto-play feature, you can let go of the flippers and watch the game complete your shots! The manufacturer released 3,361 units of the table.

Also included in Add-On Pack 3 is Gorgar, a classic 1979-era table designed by Barry Oursler, a legendary designer credited with Pin·Bot, Cyclone, Comet, Space Shuttle, and Jungle Lord to name just a few. Gorgar was the very first “tal king” pinball machine. With a vocabulary of seven words (Gorgar, Speaks, Beat, Me, You, Hurt, and Got), Gorgar is able to say phrases such as “Gorgar speaks”, “Me Gorgar, beat me”, and “You hurt Gorgar”. It has a magnetic Snake Pit that holds your ball captive as he thunders, “Me got you”. The audio also features a heartbeat sound that races faster and faster as the action of the gameplay builds up when the player is doing well.

Add-On Pack 4

Creature from the Black Lagoon was designed by the legendary John Trudeau. Doctor Flash, as he’s known, was involved in the designing of over 50 games for Gottlieb, Williams and Bally! “Creature” combines the excitement of watching a famous Universal monster flick with the fun of a drive-in movie date. The player has to save their date from the Creature and is rewarded by seeing the world’s first ever pinball hologram! This classic table also features story and dialog from the movie.

Black Knight was designed by Steve Richie – who also lent his talents as the voice of the B lack Knight. This table was the first ever to introduce a split-level playfield, with three ramps leading to and from the upper playfield. This classic also featured the first ever Magna-Save: a magnet that allowed users to push a button which saves a ball from draining down the outlane. Another first was Bonus Ball. In a multi-player game, this feature awards the player with the highest score a few additional seconds of free play.

With our successful campaign to help raise money for the Twilight Zone table and other great tables already in development, FarSight is very excited about adding many more amazing classics to our collection over the upcoming years!

Should be £7.99. It was originally $9.99 when released within the US store!

So this is basically a digital version of Williams Pinball Classics, which is a good thing, due to the high price of the retail version! The supply was limited & was £9.99 when first released & now due to the rarity the prices vary between £20-£30!

Just recently got back into Marvel Pinball so I will enjoy this, especially the Funhouse table!

Only one table was financed by Kickstarter, because it needed a licence outside of the licenses they have.

They already have the licenses for ALL tables made by Gottlieb, Stern, Williams and Bally, but ONLY as long as they don’t use other licenses.

So if say they wanted to make the Pirates of the Carribean or Adams Family tables available, they’s need the licenses from the film studios that made the movies (and a bunch of other licenses), which costs a lot of money.

Most tables however don’t rely on third party licenses, and all the tables they’ve made until now (10 tables) are without any third party licenses. So they didn’t need Kickstarter for them.

If it’s buy once, get both as suggested above then that’s good. I hope it’s well priced though, and not a straight dollar to pound conversion that I’ve seen some companies opting for lately. Exchange rates still exist.

Great to finally see the title launching.One of the reasons you (Farlight) mentioned, for it being delayed in EU, was that SCEE is going to back the title up with heavy promotion.I did not see any of this promotion mentioned in this article.

What kind of promotion are we talking about? Is it cheaper price for PS+ owners, free DLC or what?

There is Trophy Support for DLC packs 3 & 4. Packs 1 & 2 are awaiting a trophy patch which is currently being looked at. Alot of US purchasers aren’t happy, as they will have to replay the original packs to receive the trophies, but you can’t please everyone!

Also they would be very brave to release this with a £9.99 price tag, considering the original $9.99 US price!

Thanks that we finaly get this game in EU but I miss the explanation why it took so long to get it here and a discount because we now have a month old game compared to the US.

Why can’t we buy a season ticket to get all the upodates for a discounted price.

I have waited long for this game and I can wait much longer to see if we get it for free on Plus or get a nice discount in the future. You where not able to extend the hype for me and I wait for Zen 2 to enjoy all the wonderfull tables I’ve bought to play on my Vita.

I’m a big pinball fan so I’ve already bought Williams Pinball Classics. That means I’ve already got Gorgar, Fun House, Arabian Nights, Pin-Bot and Medieval Madness. Are you going to sell the tables separately as well? Otherwise I don’t know why you’ve grouped them in such a way that people are put off by all the repeats they’ll have. Really annoying.

That is correct. It has been our goal to vastly improve the graphics and physics of the older tables we’ve released to be on the same ground as the new ones coming out. This was an intentional effort to include one updated table and one completely new table in each pack.

I like the demo a lot and will probably buy the full game. Love the vertical mode on Vita! However, a bit more configurability would be great – say if you could tilt the other way and use X and triangle for the flippers.. touch screen just isn’t the same (yay buttons, as they say)

Thank you Bobby for bringing us these tables. i had posted a thread a while ago asking Zen to bring us some pre-loved tables (adams Family, Mediaeval madness) but here you are, gone and done it for us already. thank you. and the quality is right up there, if not surpasses Zen’s high calibre as well. I must say that the angles in the demo that one can play a table on are much better than Zen’s, I always feel too tall or too short trying to tweak a confortable angle to play on. You seemed to get it right. As for the 12 weeks, logically SCEE has many more countries, censorship/ laws, languages etc to cope with in releasing code. That is going to take time. Around 12 weeks sounds about right to me. I’m actually surprised it’s ‘ere so soon. Seeing we get the Ps3 AND Vita versions with the one purchase, I’m scooting into the store now to buy me a Pinball Arcade :)

Thanks for the clarification on release countries Bobby. I was mislead by the AE, GB, IE in the header of this post (usually AU and NZ are listed separately).

Picked Pinball Arcade up at first light here in Australia and it’s really great. Explanation of the table rules is handled well and the Vita versions portrait mode is very neat… I’m surprised how well the touch screen flippers work.

I’d love to see the Addams Family, Tron Legacy or the Doctor Who table. Start a Kickstarter and you’ll have my support. As soon as Start Trek: TNG Kickstarter goes up I’ll be there as well. Keep up the great work!

I own Williams Pinball Classics as well. Is there a chance the physics and the graphics of the pinball engine are getting improved also by means of an update? Because some tables really play jerky when not in full view mode. Would like to see this, i love the game, but the framedrop is frustrating.

Brilliant game and table selection! Picked up PS3 and Vita versions together.

Vertical mode is great on Vita, although buttons for the flippers would be best. Fingers have to hover off touch screen with a gap or one will accidentally trigger the flippers, even when not quite touching the screen. Could we have an option to rotate so that X and triangle buttons are at the bottom of the screen and used for flippers?

PS3 version has better lighting. Will Vita version get a lighting update? It has the power to do it, I’m sure.

Looking forwards to future DLC and developments. Congratulations!

Also, would you consider doing White Water, Fish Tales, Indiana Jones and Tales from the Crypt? Just personal favourites!

I highly recommend this game – the attention to detail in recreating classic tables is excellent. I can’t wait for the Twilight Zone table, probably the best ever pinball game. I hope to become a Bally table king!

Yeah………..come on guys, when are the game packs out in UK. This is SUCH a quality title and the day they add Addams Family I will simply be in heaven; but for now I will settle on release date for game packs in UK.